Musicians should have at least one person on their team responsible for turning their efforts into a business.

It’s not just about securing deals and fans. It’s about making sure those actions create an ongoing revenue stream.

Being creative, writing music, recording, & playing gigs requires a lot of time and effort. To really boost your career, find a good manager (start here), a good coach (start here), or a good producer who can help you begin to see yourself as a business.

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We have something pretty exciting to tell you. It’s kind of a big deal and possibly not everyone will “get it” at first because it’s just a small change to how Music Xray already works. But this really changes everything for so many musicians, songwriters and song owners.

As you know, Music Xray has some clever technology-driven A&R tools – more than anyone else – but the magic ingredient is the collective filtering power of the hundreds of industry professionals who use Music Xray every day to discover new songs and talent.

In a matter of days, Music Xray is going to start telling you how industry professionals are rating your music. It’s going to work like this: if any one of your songs has been submitted to professionals and rated by them at least five times, we’re going to email you to tell you the song’s average ratings.

Look at it like this. After your first few submissions, you will know how your song is being received by the professionals you’re submitting to. Even if your song has not been selected by a professional for an opportunity, it doesn’t mean they haven’t loved your music. So now, you will know.

That means, if your ratings are high – you should continue to submit. It’s probably just a matter of time. Plus, industry professionals can also see high rated songs on the site even if those songs have not been directly submitted to them. In other words, if your song is well considered by industry professionals who have received and heard your song, we’re making it visible to many industry professionals who have not heard it.

If your initial ratings are low, you will know that perhaps continued investment in the track is not warranted. Instead, you may want to consider submitting it to one of hundreds of professionals who are on the site for the sole purpose of giving you honest professional song critiques and career coaching – eventually helping you to make adjustments to your music or your submission strategy so you can go back and get deals.

Music Xray becomes a reliable predictor of commercial success and the primary tool to help musicians achieve that success!

Music Xray band, The Commuters might hail from New York, but their kinetic, personally revealing anthems capture an alt-rock essence that aspires toward worldwide appeal.

Their commercial debut (As I Make My Way – EP) was released at the end of August, and is comprised of 4 songs — “As I Make My Way,” “Bombs Away,” “Fallen From Grace,” and “You’ll Stay Right Here” — all from their upcoming album, Rescue, due out in early 2012.

Their video for “As I Make My Way” was added to mtvU’s rotation in early October and they have received extensive airplay at college radio stations throughout the US.

It isn’t news that the past decade has brought tumultuous change to the music industry. Advances have primarily impacted the way music is accessed, distributed and paid for. But, few companies in our sector have harnessed technology to its full extent to optimize their business processes.

While most music companies have incorporated data mining and social trending statistics into their discovery processes, the fundamental way the industry sources new songs and talent has remained unchanged. Isn’t it time we re-think how we conduct A&R?

We think of A&R as the process by which we find and help create great musical products. In reality, A&R’s primary business function is to reduce risk by identifying or creating highly compelling product and managing promotion efforts to reduce the likelihood of failure in the marketplace. So, in terms of risk reduction, traditional A&R was only adequate when the business climate afforded companies the luxury of having occasional successes compensate for far more frequent flops. In today’s new music business, narrower margins, smaller budgets and fragmented audiences require a more efficient approach than primary reliance on golden ears and talented gut instincts. Additional and supplemental tools are needed to create success more often than failure, or at the very least, improve success rates to a more manageable level.

Click to see the video

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I could go on. The work has been featured in numerous documentaries from BBC to Discovery to NatGeo and so on…

In 2001, I joined forces with a smart, family-owned software company outside Barcelona, Spain that had come up with a technology (at the time it was cutting-edge) that could analyze the acoustic properties and underlying mathematical patterns in music. Together, we started a company called Polyphonic HMI and began trying to sell a music recommendation system to music retailers. Digital retail did not exist so we were trying to sell it to Best Buy, Tower, Sam Goody etc. Our only true competition was a small start-up called Savage Beast from Silicon Valley. They were using people to classify songs instead of computers, however.

We were both too early to market and we both nearly went bankrupt. Savage Beast went back to the drawing board, changed their name to Pandora and the rest is history. We went back to the drawing board and came up with a service called Hit Song Science. We realized that making a prediction about the music someone would likely enjoy based upon their favorite songs was only slightly different than making a prediction about what music an entire market would enjoy based upon what it had proven to enjoy in the past – i.e. hit songs.

After months of fine-tuning, the technology worked pretty well when used properly. It had its limitations but if you took those into account, you could glean some really good data that really helped choose the single on an album that would likely encounter the least market resistance when promoted on par with all the other singles being promoted contemporaneously.

Mike McCready & Malcolm Gladwell

In short, we determined, within reasonable margins of error, that most hit songs (even in brand new genres) conform to predictablepatterns – concrete combinations of melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, fullness of sound, cadence, sonic brilliance etc. Songs that sound like hits to the human ear but that do not match one of the common “hit song patterns” face much steeper market resistance than those that do. I recognize there is much additional data that could be observed (as per Lefsetz’ post) but this is where we started.

A few labels embraced the service and tried to use it as we’d intended. We built up a nice little consulting business but it was nothing that was ever going to explode into a mass-scale sort of endeavor. In his book about WMG, Stan Cornyn remarked that in the race to adopt new technology, the music industry finishes just ahead of the Amish.

While that may be an exaggerated truth, I’m sure I had my shortcomings when it came to evangelizing Hit Song Science. So, I lay no blame with the market. But most frustrating was that so many labels, instead of working with us to try to harness the power of the technology to improve their business, would either spend time trying to disprove it worked by “tricking” the technology (not hard to do) or to use our reports to cover their asses – using them in internal meetings when our reports supported what they already believed or hiding them in a drawer when they did not. Rarely were we able to show a significant impact on a label’s bottom line after consistent use of Hit Song Science over time. The technology was rarely used to help make business and promotion decisions.

Yes, we should have just started our own label, yada yada, but we weren’t able to raise that kind of capital at the time and we weren’t that kind of company. All of that is covered in the HBS case study so I won’t re-hash it here.

In late 2005, I left Polyphonic HMI and in 2006 I co-founded Music Xray. Music Xray, while not sold as a technology service is a continuation of my vision for improving the efficiency and accuracy of the A&R process. Music Xray is an online A&R platform – currently the ONLY online platform specialized in A&R.

We called it Music Xray because we wanted to make the point that any kind of skill-enhancing technology is just a tool. Hit SongScience was never trying to replace human ears and ten-thousand-hour-earned gut instinct with a computer. Music Xray, like the medical x-ray, is just a tool that helps professionals make better decisions by adding never-before available data to the process. The medical x-ray doesn’t replace the doctor but few of us would consider visiting a doctor who refuses to use an x-ray machine when appropriate. Not using the best available data in the music business could also be considered malpractice but since lives are not on the line (just livelihoods and careers) there is no external pressure in our industry to adopt these kinds of best-practices. In fact, there is more industry-recognized glory when you can attribute success to elusive golden ears and gut instinct – much like the mystique surrounding a professional athlete.

Only when not using empirical data creates a competitive disadvantage do we see mass-adoption.

To that end, when we finally built a service and a business model that aligns with the clear self interests of all the parties (musicians and music industry professionals) it works remarkably well and today, Music Xray is becoming widely used – although a bit still under the radar.

We call Music Xray a 21st century A&R platform. It is free for music industry professionals to use. The small fees we charge musicians to have their music considered for deals achieves results they could not achieve at any price, in most cases, and it saves months of work and thousands of dollars for those few musicians who actually could achieve the results on their own. In fact, in the past 6 months alone, Music Xray has helped musicians place (and the industry find) over 3500 songs and acts to be used in commercial and exposure deals. These include major and indie label signings, songs placed in major motion pictures, network and cable TV series etc. We get daily love letters from both industry professionals and musician users. It’s very rewarding and the company is growing robustly (whew!).

I believe that as long as commercial and exposure opportunities for music exist, there will be human gatekeepers making decisions regarding which songs and acts are chosen. They will use data-driven tools to help make the decisions and Music Xray seeks to provide some of the best decision-making tools that enhance golden ears and gut instinct. To use a NASCAR metaphor, we build the best race car; one that enhances a driver’s natural talent and skill and we make the race car available for free. It’s a no-brainer to take it for a test drive if A&R is part of your business.

As an A&R platform, Music Xray is now used by over 1300 industry professionals and organizations including major labels, MTV, dozens of independent labels, publishers, radio stations, producers and even a few influential music bloggers. Some of our tools include an unique song-to-opportunity matching system and the ability for professionals to harness each others’ ears and expertise: like crowd-sourcing – except the crowd is formed by individuals who make their living with their ears. We continue to roll-out data-driven tools that help professionals find the highest potential songs and acts to fit each unique opportunity (not just finding hit singles).

A by-product of this system is that we observe (and share the data back to our community) each touch-point between the professionals and songs and acts on the platform. Each day we can identify numerous songs and acts that have been evaluated favorably by multiple A&R professionals but that remain available. In short, all the professionals can observe what’s “trending” among their industry peers. That is something that never before has been possible to know. For example, last week, these were some of the trending songs in pop across a wide swath of the industry:

Financially successful artists will never truly be DIY. They will always need someone on the team responsible for turning it all into a business. We build the tools to make that process more efficient and more accurate – increasing the chances of success for everyone.

So, it turns out that it’s not just about hit prediction. Often, it’s just about finding the right song for the right opportunity – a sort of Match.com for the music business.

Jay Frank, former Yahoo Music executive and former MTV executive officially launches today a SINGLES ONLY label. Send him your best singles today exclusively through Music Xray.

With a focus on artist-friendly deals, smart marketing budgets, and deep industry connections, DigSin artists are positioned for greatness with more flexibility than other labels

DigSin is a singles label that uses new, targeted digital marketing techniques to build audiences. Founded by Jay Frank, author of the top digital songwriting book Futurehit.DNA, DigSin finds the best songs by the best new artists that are well suited for a career launch around their very best songs!

Thank you for submitting wonderful music to my company, it has been a pleasure to meet and talk to all of you.

Here begins my first installment of “Dave’s Music Corner”

We’ll start simple and move on to more and more advanced concepts in future blogs..

In this column, blog etc, I will attempt to give you all some advise from a “Producer and A&R perspective” so that your presentations and music can have the greatest chance of succeeding.

This first column could be called: “Make Every Second Count”

You should be aware of the fact that, as a producer or A&R person, or even an agent booking a gig, time is very short and valuable. Though you put weeks and months into your music, though you personally know every note and know that your guitar solo in song three or vocal high note in song two, are INCREDIBLE, you may have but few seconds to impress an A&R person, Producer or agent.

It seems that many artists are overly optimistic that a Producer or A&R person will take the time to fish out the little gems in your EPK and or submissions. I wish this were true. But in reality, you may only have seconds to impress.

MAKE EVERY SECOND COUNT!!

Having received what must be thousands of submissions from artists by now, I have noticed a few consistent errors in presentation that I’d like to address to you all.

The main AVOIDABLE mistakes I see are incorrect song ordering on an EPK and intros that are either too long or boring.

I’d like to give you two rules to start off with:

1) Put your best song and production first.

2) Keep your intros short or if not, make sure they are absolutely amazing.

First of all, please please put your best song and production first in your EPK.

This may seem like a “no-brainer” to many of you, and I too would have thought so, but

in phone conversations with artists, I have often been asked to “listen to song # 3”, being promised that “song #3 is our hit”. If it is the hit, why is it all the way back to the 3rd position in the list?, (or even later sometimes).

At most, and agent or A&R rep will only have time to listen to the first three songs, IF they like the 1st. And if song #1 doesn’t catch his/her attention, each subsequent song heard will be met with more and more doubt about the group or artist.

What industry and A&R reps do when looking over an EPK is immediately listen to the FIRST SONG. Make it your BEST song. If you are not sure, poll your friends and family asking for honest criticism.

A&R reps are in a tremendous hurry. The first song will make or break you, even the first few seconds or notes are important.

This brings me to another mistake I have noticed. The first song might be a great song, but if it’s intro is too long, mixed badly, or not as good as the song, you are hurting your chances. Keep your intro either 1) Short..or 2) Absolutely amazing!!!

It literally can be a 5 sec make or break ball game for your music so, make every second count.

Lead with your best song. Make sure the intro isn’t too long and is interesting.

Music Xray provides a series of tools to industry professionals to help them identify high potential songs and acts. Each tool works a bit differently and highlights different types of success potential. Today, we thought we’d tell you about one of them…

Collective A&R Statistics

You may not know that every time an industry professional receives one of your songs, they rate it. They give it a score for its composition, arrangement, production, performance and hit potential.

Songs that are submitted a number of times to various professionals on the site begin accumulating multiple ratings, all from professionals who make their living with their ears.

Each day, professionals can log into their account and view the collective ratings. They can view songs that have received high ratings across the board from multiple professionals. They can also choose to view songs that have been rated highly on composition but that maybe did not score well on production or performance. The songwriting might be excellent and while the rough demo recording might not turn any heads at radio it could easily get the attention of the manager of a celebrity act. Alternatively, “hit potential” may not be important to a music supervisor seeking a quality Jazz song. So, that supervisor can adjust his or her search to highlight songs that are consistently getting good ratings on other criteria but that may have scored low as a potential hit song.

This tool enables Music Xray to display your music to professionals to whom you never even submitted a song. Some Music Xray artists have been contacted by industry professionals they never would have thought would have an interest in their music. The key to making this tool work for you is to submit your best songs to more professionals so that it can accumulate ratings.

We currently do not reflect the ratings back to you, the musicians however, we are working on a way to do this in the near future.

At Music Xray, we are committed to creating the best environment for musicians and industry professionals to interact in ways that are rewarding for both parties and to generating the greatest number of potential paths to success for each song.

As a bit of an anecdote, these are today’s highest trending songs at industry A&R (with consistently high ratings across all measured criteria). In other words, these are a few of the songs getting the most attention on the platform right at this red hot moment: